


Home Cookin'

by KittyBandit



Category: D.Gray-man
Genre: Domestic Fluff, Fluff, M/M, Modern AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-11
Updated: 2018-09-11
Packaged: 2019-07-10 21:12:44
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,520
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15957650
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/KittyBandit/pseuds/KittyBandit
Summary: Lavi was a man on a mission—a mission to feed his boyfriend something that didn’t come out of a box labeled Domino’s.





	Home Cookin'

**Author's Note:**

> This fic is for Dragon, who won a giveaway I had on my tumblr blog. :3c Hope this is what you had in mind!

 

“Okay,” Lavi said to the empty kitchen as he stared down at the smudged screen of his phone. “I can do this.” He was a man on a mission—a mission to feed his boyfriend something that didn’t come out of a box labeled _Domino_ _’s_.

Allen had been working double-time lately. One of his coworkers had gone on maternity leave, and that left plenty of open shifts for Allen to snatch up. He’d been more than willing to step in for the extra money, but it also left Lavi in limbo. With no teaching duties most of the summer, and unable to find part-time work for the three months between class sessions, Lavi had more free time on his hands than ever before. At first, the time off had been wonderful. He wrote up lesson plans for the coming year, mapping things out until _December_ , and when he’d finished that, he’d caught up on all the reading he’d been putting off during the school year. Now, with nothing to do and Allen working at least twelve-hour shifts, he needed to do _something_ before his brain exploded.

Inspiration came by way of a comment Allen had made the night before. _“I wish I had time to make dinner.”_

Unlike Lavi, Allen loved to cook almost as much as he loved to eat. He’d been their designated chef since they’d left high school and moved in together, but even after watching Allen in the kitchen for nearly six years, Lavi still was woefully ill-equipped to cook more than macaroni and cheese, or if he was feeling that culinary spirit, a grilled cheese sandwich.

But Allen had been working so hard for nearly two weeks now, and Lavi, with nothing left to do and all the time in the world, wanted to give him a treat—a home-cooked meal that wasn’t out of a box. After scouring the internet for recipes all morning, he’d come up with the perfect dinner: fried chicken, garlic mashed potatoes with gravy, and steamed asparagus.

The recipe made everything seem so easy. They already had most of the ingredients for the meal at home; oil, spices, flour and eggs for the batter, butter and milk for the potatoes. All he’d been left to buy were chicken, red potatoes, asparagus, and fresh garlic. It’d been an easy shopping trip, but now the real task began—the actual cooking.

“Potatoes first,” he told himself, dumping out the five pound bag on the counter. The heavy red lumps rolled around, many falling off the counter and scattering along the tiled floor. He cursed and chased after them, picking them up one at at time and juggling them in his arms. Tossing the entire mess of potatoes into a pot, he filled it to the brim with water, then set it on the stove before peeking at his recipe again. He squinted at the screen. “Wash the potatoes? They’re already in water. Good enough, I suppose.”

Turning the stove burner on, he went back to his phone and skimmed over the fried chicken recipe. “This can’t be that hard… KFC fries a million chickens a day.” Too intimidated to fry a whole chicken, Lavi had opted for portioned meat—legs, wings, thighs, and breasts. He winced as he opened the packaging, letting out a sound of disgust as he touched the raw meat. He eyeballed the directions on his phone again, making sure he had everything right.

Setting the meat aside, he put together the batter. Beaten eggs sat in one large plastic bowl on the counter, and a mix of flour and spices in another. With a heavy sigh, he looked from the meat, to the eggs, to the flour.

Lavi grabbed a chicken leg, one of the least intimidating portions of the chicken, and looked from one bowl to the other. As the recipe instructed, he dipped the meat into the flour, then the eggs, then back into the flour. He stared at the sticky mess as he finished the leg per the directions, frowning. “Okay… This looks wrong.”

Wasn’t the chicken breading supposed to be… thicker? He swore it was… Maybe the instructions weren’t right?

With a shrug, he set the chicken leg down on the counter and grabbed the bowl of eggs, pouring it into the flour mixture. He mixed it up, stirring it with fork until it resembled the consistency of dough. Lavi tilted his head, then grabbed a handful of the sticky concoction, smearing it over the chicken leg he’d been working on earlier.

“Mmm, yeah. This looks better.” He said the words to no one, though even to his own ears, they sounded less convincing than he’d hoped.

Now to start the oil…

 

xXxXxXx

 

Allen brushed back the white bangs from his forehead, heaving a sigh as he climbed the steps of his apartment building. Work had been long and he was glad to be done for the night, but it would be worth it when he saw the extra cash on his paycheck at the end of the week. He was ready to kick off his shoes and relax on the futon—maybe even catch up on some of the shows he’d been missing while working such long hours. However, as he reached the fourth floor landing and walked towards his apartment, he smelled something strange. Something burning? Maybe Miranda had burnt her microwave popcorn in the apartment next to his and Lavi’s. That always made an impressive stink for such a little bag.

But his suspicions were thrown out the window as he opened the door and stepped inside.

Smoke hung along the ceiling of the apartment, filling the whole living space with a burnt, oily smell. He heard cussing and something crash in the kitchen. Kicking the door closed, Allen dropped his bag on the floor and rushed to the source of the noise, panic blossoming in his chest. “Lavi! Are you all right?!”

To say the kitchen was a mess would’ve been a grave understatement—even _disaster_ held less weight than warranted. No, the kitchen had become a war zone.

Something had boiled over on the stove, a thick, starchy substance covering most of the glass top. Splotches of food and puddles of water, or what he hoped was water, covered the floor and counters. Smoke hung in the air, but was slowly filtering out of the room through an open window. And there, next to a sink piled high with dirty dishes, stood Lavi.

The redhead coughed as he lifted the lid off a smoking pan sitting on the counter, peering into it for a moment before shaking his head and pulling away. “Yeah, I’m fine.”

Allen stood at the threshold, his jaw hung loose as he took in the scene. “Lavi… _What happened_?”

Embarrassment burning brightly in his cheeks, Lavi sighed as his shoulders dropped low. “I was… trying to cook you dinner,” he said, voice soft and feeble, like broken man.

Allen blinked and looked around the room again. “Well,” he began, finally stepping into the mess. “I’ll give you an A for effort.” He met Lavi at the counter, wiping at a smudge of something stuck to Lavi’s cheek.

“This is all a mess. I’m sorry, Al.” Lavi dropped the lid back on the pan he’d been checking earlier and ran a hand through his messy hair. “It was supposed to be a nice surprise so you could relax after work. Now it’s all ruined.”

Allen peered into one of the open pots, finding a thick, gluey glob of something white in it. “What were you trying to make?”

Lavi winced as Allen inspected his ruined meal. “That was supposed to be mashed potatoes. I was trying to fry up some chicken, too. The only thing I didn’t ruin was the asparagus, because I never got to it.”

“Oh, Lavi.” Allen chuckled softly as he turned back to his boyfriend and hugged him tightly. “I love you, but let’s not try this again.”

“Agreed,” Lavi mumbled back, falling into the embrace with gusto. When they pulled apart, he sighed and rubbed at his good eye. “You go relax while I get this cleaned up. I guess I’ll order another pizza for tonight.”

Without hesitation, Allen took Lavi’s hands in his, stopping him before he reached for the mop. “How about this? I help you with this mess, then we get cleaned up and go out for dinner?”

“I can’t ask you to help me with this. You just got off work.”

“Which means I’m also still in work mode.” Allen stood on his tip-toes, pulling Lavi down for a quick kiss on the lips. “C’mon. We’ll get this cleaned in no time.”

“Allen, you’re a prince,” Lavi swooned, leaning down to steal another kiss before Allen could slip away to work on the pile of dishes in the sink.

He grinned back, mischief in his silver eyes. “If I’m a prince, then I expect a princely meal.”

Lavi chuckled as he dumped what had once been potatoes into the garbage can. “Medieval Times it is, then.”


End file.
